Thursday, February 23, 2012

Joining the State of Georgia's Strong4Life campaign in demonstrating a complete lack of understanding for childhood obesity is Disney with its new Epcot exhibit and online campaign Habit Heroes.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, Epcot's exhibit has kids following two characters, "Will Power" and "Callie Stenics", through a 4,700 square foot attraction that has them shooting virtual hot dogs with broccoli and dancing to defeat a super-super morbidly obese character named Lead Bottom.

Because after all, kids with obesity are obviously just gluttonous and lazy and they probably lie around and eat junk food all day, right?

It couldn't possibly be a problem with the environment the kids are growing up in, could it? Geez, kids these days, they just don't try hard enough, do they?

So thanks for being so helpful Disney - I mean if your kid's not overweight or obese, here's to Disney reinforcing society's most hateful negative obesity stereotyping, and if they are overweight or obese - what kid doesn't want to be made to feel like a personal failure while on a Disney family vacation?

[UPDATE: 48 hours after this blog was posted, and after intense uproar in social media circles and in the press, Disney did the right thing and closed the exhibit for retooling. Kudos to them for responding quickly - I'm sure their intent wasn't to vilify children with obesity and am hopeful that Habit Heroes' next iteration will be a helpful ally in good health]

About Me

Family doc, Assistant Prof. at the University of Ottawa, Author of The Diet Fix, and founder of Ottawa's non-surgical Bariatric Medical Institute - a multi-disciplinary, ethical, evidence-based nutrition and weight management centre. Nowadays I'm more likely to stop drugs than start them. You can also find me on Twitter and Facebook.